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I stop, the fantasy evaporating as I stare at the dark red scabs on her left bicep.
What the fuck?
They look like puncture wounds, deep ones.
“She said she fell on some broken glass,” Alina murmurs in Russian, as uncannily tuned in to me as always. “Interesting, isn’t it?”
It is indeed. While it’s theoretically possible to fall on broken glass and end up with puncture wounds, one is far more likely to get sliced up—and I don’t see any marks of that kind on her arm.
“I wonder if she was stabbed or caught some shrapnel,” Alina continues, again echoing my thoughts. “What do you think? My bet is on the latter.”
I force myself to sound disinterested, bored by the topic. “I think she fell on some broken glass.” I haven’t told my sister about the additional report I commissioned from Konstantin’s team, and I’m not planning to do so.
Chloe is my mystery to unravel, my puzzle to solve.
My pretty toy to play with.
Her eyes meet mine, and she quickly looks away, her hand tightening on her fork as her small chest rises and falls in a faster rhythm. I smile darkly, watching her. I unsettle her, make her nervous, and it’s not just the sexual tension that heats the air between us. I caught the way she looked at my banged-up knuckles during lunch, saw the questions in her eyes.
My zaychik is smart enough to be wary of me.
She knows, deep down, what kind of man I am.
I study her throughout the meal, feasting my eyes on her while she feasts on the fruits of Pavel’s kitchen labor. She’s still discreet and subtle about it, but at least three heaping portions of plov, Pavel’s Georgian rice pilaf specialty, disappear from her plate in short order, followed by a serving of every salad and side dish on the table, along with an entire plate of lamb kebab, tonight’s main dish.
Her off-the-charts appetite both amuses and upsets me because it reveals something important.
It tells me she’s known real, true hunger in the recent past.
The realization adds to my frustration, as do the marks on her arm. Konstantin still hasn’t come through with the report, and it’s driving me mad. I want to know what happened to her. I need to know it. It’s fast becoming an obsession—and so is she. This afternoon, when she went hiking with Slava, I found myself climbing walls because I couldn’t watch her through the cameras. I want to know what she’s doing every moment of every day, and no matter how hard I try to distract myself, she’s all I’m able to think about.
As the meal draws to a close, I contemplate getting her to stay for an digestif with me, but when I catch her covering a yawn, I decide against it. Alina’s skill with makeup has hidden the outward signs of Chloe’s exhaustion, but she’s still fragile, still breakable… too much so for all the dark, dirty things I want to do to her. Besides, I can’t be certain of my self-control tonight.
The desire searing my veins feels too powerful, too savage for a smooth seduction.
Soon, I promise myself as I watch her walk out of the dining room and disappear up the stairs.
Soon I’ll get to the bottom of what makes Chloe Emmons tick, and appease this hunger.
* * *
It’s nearly two a.m. when I admit defeat and get up to go for a run. After barely sleeping last night and working off much of my restless energy by sparring with the guards, I should’ve been dead to the world. Instead, I lay awake for hours, my body burning with unfulfilled desire and my mind filled with restless thoughts. Each time I’d come close to drifting off, I’d see the fucking pendant dangling above me, and rage would flood my veins, jerking me awake.
My sister knew what she was doing when she hung that bauble around Chloe’s pretty neck.
The night sky is clear when I exit the house, the light from the half-moon illuminating my path as I begin jogging down the driveway. Not that I need it—I have excellent night vision. As the forest thickens around me, I speed up until I’m sprinting down the road leading to the gate. Halfway there, I take a sharp right and enter into the woods, my sneakers crunching on leaves and twigs as I weave through the trees. It’s darker here, more dangerous, with the uneven ground and fallen branches, but the challenge is what I’m after. Running like this forces me to focus, to exert myself both mentally and physically. At the same time, something about the night forest soothes me. The quiet rustling of wild creatures in the bushes, the hooting of an owl above my head, the loamy scent of decomposing vegetation—it’s all part of the experience, part of what attracts me to this place.
